Meet The Maker: Fresh Baby

Sisters Cheryl Tallman (Founder and CEO) and Joan Ahlers (Co-founder and Director of Sales) were motivated to start Fresh Baby in 2002 out of the positive experience they had making their own baby food. Both were disappointed with the options provided by mass marketed baby food companies. They found that it was actually easy and quick to prepare food at home with a few simple tools. This experience led to the eventual creation of Fresh Baby and the Fresh Start Kit.

Cheryl is an executive and entrepreneur. Before founding Fresh Baby she was the CEO of Touchscreen Media Group (TMG), an Internet consulting firm which she founded back in 1992. She also has several years of experience in sales at IBM and a degree in Biomedical Engineering. Cheryl lives in Michigan with her husband and her Fresh Baby, Spencer.

Joan lives in New Mexico with her husband, stepdaughter Erin, and four Fresh Babies, Madison, Jordan, Gregory, and Sienna. When her daughter Madison (age 9) was born, Joan embarked on the most challenging, yet fulfilling job of her career: motherhood. Not one to rest, she has stayed active and has been elected to the School Board where she is involved in improving her district's education system. Joan also maintains a real estate license. It was shortly after Madison was born that Joan began making her own baby food.

Joan remembers when she was told that her first child was ready to start on real food and she opened a jar of peas to find that it smelled horrible. She tossed it in the garbage, thinking it was bad and opened another to discover the same thing. She even tasted the second one and found that it tasted as bad as it smelled. She decided then and there that she would learn to make her own food. There was no reason that her baby couldn't eat "real" food, as long as it was steamed and pureed.

Joan was the first of the sisters to have kids, so when Cheryl's turn came around, Joan packed up her homemade "baby food kit" and shipped it to her sister. As a working mom with little free time, Cheryl was amazed at how easy it was to prepare her own baby food for her son. All told, it took about a half hour to prepare enough food to last the entire week.

In addition, both women found that their children were eating a more diverse variety of foods and seemed to have fewer childhood ailments, such as earaches. They were able to expose their children to foods and spices, such as eggplant, ground nuts, ginger, and oregano, that are not provided in mass marketed, processed foods. Both women found that they were saving money, eliminating unwamted additives, and were considered "super moms" by their friends for making their own baby food. They both enjoyed that last part. It was an inside joke because they spent very little extra time preparing the food.

The sisters' exhaustive research enabled them to develop a system that took little time and was easy to do. The Fresh Baby concept is simple — healthy, all natural food prepared quickly and easily at home with the Fresh Start Kit. The Fresh Start Kit is designed to make it easy to introduce new foods and flavors to babies by providing recipe suggestions that include adding natural herbs and spices as well as combining foods to create tasty meals. It includes everything that a parent needs to produce homemade food, while taking very little time away from a busy schedule. The Kit includes: The Cworkbook, an easy-to-read combination workbook and cookbook that features information on introducing solid foods, the Fresh Start baby food making system and over 40 recipes, video with step-by-step instructions, Quick Reference Card with helpful hints about what age to introduce certain foods, food interactions, common ailments, plus nutrient source information and healthy eating habits, and two covered freezer trays (they resemble ice-cube trays) designed for preparation and storage.

Fresh Baby has also set up a web site (www.myfreshbaby.com) that provides easy ordering and a resources section that offers links to informational web sites and on-line stores for finding ethnic and all-natural ingredients. One of the most interesting aspects of the web site will be the Fresh Baby Parent's Club, a message board provided for parents to interact with each other, ask questions, and offer their own experiences and recipes. The Fresh Baby web site provides parents from all over the world with the opportunity to share their cooking ideas.

In the United States today, more than 60% of the population is overweight. The best way to start our children off on the right foot is by feeding and eventually teaching them healthy eating habits. Fresh Baby is dedicated to providing information-rich products and easy-to-implement practices to parents who want to introduce their children to healthy eating habits and give them the best start in life. Cheryl says, "The ultimate goal of Fresh Baby is to have our name synonymous with healthy eating. We want to show parents that healthy eating does not take a lot of time and does not require a degree from a culinary school!"

Retailers can find out more about Fresh Baby's Fresh Start Kit by contacting Joan at 505-377-6446
or by e-mail: joan.ahlers@freshbaby.com